When the Louisville, KY-based My Morning Jacket decamped to the scenic environs of Stinson Beach, CA to record 2015’s The Waterfall they were so successful they recorded material for a second full-length offering. The band decided against a double album at the time and now during the quarantined summer of 2020, those recordings arrive as The Waterfall II.
This follow-up may have never come to be had it not been for MMJ frontman Jim James rediscovering the first song while his music library was on shuffle during a walk in the early days of the Covid-19 lockdown. James noticed how the floating dreamy pop of “Spinning My Wheels” had added cultural resonance as he sang about being “hypnotized from doing the same old thing”. The track, and the album as a whole, fit these odd times and the excellent song kicks off an album which slots in well with the band’s varied past offerings as Waterfalls II drifts into and out of psych, folk, late-night disco and jam band spiked arena rock.
The freedom the band displays throughout the album can be linked to the glory days of acts like The Flaming Lips and the Beatles. The light stomp and swirling psychedelics of “Still Thinkin’”, laid back drifting album closer “The First Time” and the headier end of relationship lyrics of “Beautiful Love (Wasn’t Enough)” combines Wayne Coyne blissfulness and John Lennon lyrical pain.
The tempo shifting “Climbing The Ladder” and the heavy rocking “Wasted” are both primed for blasting out on the live stage as “Wasted” in particular shifts mid-song, positively overloading on a dirty groove, killer piano flourishes and horn blasts. The most stretched out number however is “Feel You”, a simple piano ballad plea which morphs with layers of strings and echoing electric guitar work into a Peter Frampton-esque swelling swoon-fest.
The band has always shifted gears and styles and that continues with the folk strumming/soaring vocals of “Welcome Home” and easy country grooving ”Run It” finding their place comfortably next to the ominous disco dance beats and late night get down horn pulses of “Magic Bullet”. While a cool tune on its own “Magic Bullet” feels out of place when taking the record as a whole, but that exact freedom from constraint is what successfully makes MMJ who they have always been.
Perhaps the album would have never been released, forgotten as outtakes gone by, but luckily the blissful/yet haunted journey of Waterfalls II enters the collective consciousness during a time of flux in our culture and the shifting of styles, feeling of loss, yet a sense of hope just under the surface, manages to work out better in the summer of 2020 than My Morning Jacket could have ever predicted.
Photo Credit: Danny Clinch
